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Newsletter for April 2004 Inside this issue: The Hidden Violence Against Healthcare Workers Don't Count on Your Hotel to Keep you Safe Cheers and Jeers for Combat Equipment in Iraq Man Attempts to Rob Bar, Gets Beating and Staples for Effort
We don't normally think of the healthcare profession as an especially violent one. But the reality is that there is a good chance every month that you can be physically assaulted at work if you are a healthcare worker.
A study of 170 U.S. hospital emergency departments showed that 43% of employees reported being physically assaulted at least once a month! Eighteen percent reported the use of a weapon to threaten staff at least once a month and 7% reported being an eye witness to a violent act that resulted in a death within the previous 5 years.
In our kinder and gentler neighbor to the north, it's not much better. At St. Paul's Hospital in Vancouver, Canada, 92% of workers had been assaulted in the emergency room at lease once over a 1-year period.
Source: Dr. Kris Clancy, Leading Edge
“If you comply with the [armed] assailant’s demand, you have no idea what your chances of survival are because only he knows what he plans to do. In real life, some victims comply and are not harmed, while others comply and are shot in cold blood. Therefore, I advise you to take action to increase your chances. Maneuvering quickly along a perpendicular or diagonal path forces the assailant to track you with his sights, which means he must constantly move his gun. That diminishes his accuracy. I’ve seen untrained shooters blast away at each other from only three feet away – and both sides still miss their targets. Furthermore, only about 10 percent of gunshot wounds are fatal. That’s good news for you because it means you have a 90 percent chance of surviving a hit.”
Jim Wagner
“If I were to name the ONE THING that can give anyone the slight edge – it is learning to harness the latent power of your mind. It is learning to use your creative imagination to achieve the goals you’ve set for yourself.”
Matt Furey
Don't Count on Your Hotel to Keep you Safe
A new study shows that upscale hotels have done little to keep you secure, even after the Oct. 2002 attack in Bali showed how terrorists target Americans in hotels.
The study, done by Hotel Asia Pacific magazine and Pertlink, a hotel consulting company, showed that about half of the 200 four- and five-star properties studied have done nothing to upgrade their security -- even though 36% of the hotels are self-admittedly insecure.
Half of the properties cannot account for all their keys and a third say they have lost their master keys!
About a quarter of all the properties (the study was done worldwide, but 60% of the properties were located in the Asia Pacific region) do not conduct pre-employment screening of their employees.
“Another fact that I find most interesting is the surprising number of people who have guns in their homes for self-protection, but do not own a decent flashlight to identify any threat that they may face. The odds are that if you need a handgun for home defense, the need for it will be greatest during the periods of low light. I recommend that anyone keeping a handgun in their home for self-defense keep a good flashlight right beside the gun. Pick up the gun, pick up the flashlight. In my classes, I teach that if you carry a handgun for self-protection, you should always have a light.”
Ken Hackathorn
Cheers and Jeers for Combat Equipment in Iraq
Travis Mitchell, former sniper in the Marine Corps and now military sales manager for SureFire, has gathered some first-hand accounts from Iraq on the performance of U.S. equipment in the field.
Cheers
Jeers
Man Attempts to Rob Bar, Gets Beating and Staples for Effort When Don Willis, 46, strode into a Kokomo, Ind., bar this month with a shotgun, I'll bet he was feeling pretty tough. But when Willis ordered the bar owner and three patrons onto the floor for a robbery, he didn't get the expected reaction. Instead, the bar owner charged Willis and took him down. One customer took the shotgun, one customer worked to subdue Willis and the other customer smashed a couple of bottles over his head. The bar owner, Tom Grawey, said, "I just did what I had to do." Willis received 19 staples in his scalp before he was arrested on a felony charge of attempted robbery. Oh, and the shotgun was unloaded and had a trigger lock. Turned out to be a bad day for Willis. Employee Computers Get Lion Share of Scrutiny While almost two thirds of American companies do background checks on employees (62%), three quarters of companies monitor their employees' Internet connections and usage (74%). Corporate security officials also review employees' e-mail (43%) and periodically review their computer files (31%). Source: CSO Magazine Girl Cries Wolf, Sets Back Victims Everywhere Whatever the problems haunting Audrey Seiler, a University of Wisconsin-Madison sophomore, her phony abduction story makes you less safe. The young woman was found unharmed in a marsh two miles from campus after she was missing for four days. Volunteers had scoured the area for her. After she was spotted by a worker walking on a nearby footpath, she told police she was abducted at knifepoint from campus, bound with duct tape and taken to the marsh. The hunt began for her abductor described as a white man in his late 20s to early 30s with a long chin wearing a stocking cap.
Then she changed her story. She was not abducted from campus, but somewhere in town. Other parts of her story broke down. Police compiled video tapes of her leaving her dorm, tapes of her buying the items she says her abductor used. Witnesses claim to have seen her freely walking around town during the time she said she was held captive. Her computer shows that she checked the locations of various parks in the area as well as the weather forecast. And, just this past February, she had told police that she had been abducted for a short time, but not assaulted, robbed or harmed in any way. I remember when she was "found", I was amazed that she was still alive. For a female to survive being taken to a secondary crime scene as remote as a marsh is highly unusual. I was even going to note it in this newsletter as an unexpected rarity. Instead, we find out she lied. And women all over the country will be hurt by it. Every false allegation, every stunt like this makes it more difficult for the real victims. Will all of us be as enthusiastic to take up the pitchforks to hunt down the wolf next time we hear someone's cries? Will your cries for help go unheeded because women like this have tainted the public trust? Will the investigating officers have more doubts in their minds about your case because of this? Will the public prosecutor go the extra mile for the next woman if he has a nagging doubt about her veracity? Now is the time to decide in your own mind that you will resist your attacker. You will fight fiercely. You will survive. You will not go with an attacker to a secondary site, no matter what he says or promises. You will make it difficult for an attacker and, in doing so, you will make it easier for potential rescuers, investigators, and prosecutors. And, your valiant efforts will make it easy for us to believe you. Go here if you want to access the newsletter archives.
Train like your life depends on it. Someday it
might.
Brad Parker
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